


The Greater Grief

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [44]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1996, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 06:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5153996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At last he goes into their bedroom—just his, now—closes the door, and lies down on the bed. He shuts his eyes. There is something screaming inside him, some agony that makes his breath come slower now, and it <i>hurts.</i> He presses his face into Sirius’s pillow, but there’s nothing, no scent.</p><p>Remus can see him, still falling, sinking with that grace he always had, and the look on his face—the glaze over his eyes—the slight dropping of his jaw as he vanished, but even before he was lost from view he was already <i>gone.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greater Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Week 44
> 
> Title from _The Song of Achilles_ by Madeline Miller

After the Aurors, after the hospital wing, after hours of waiting with Andromeda in St. Mungo’s and staring at a wall, Remus walks up the pavement to Number 12, Grimmauld Place. He lets himself in.

He stands in the hall for several minutes, just breathing. The air moves in and out of his lungs and he focuses on that, on the feel of his chest rising and falling, nothing else. But when the whole house seems to be pressing down on him, he summons his feet to move and goes into the kitchen to clean up.

The spilled soup is still covering the floor; it vanishes with a wave of Remus’s wand. He rolls up the maps on the table and washes Tonks and Moody’s dishes by hand just to have a few more minutes of distraction. It’s futile; there is no being distracted, not from this. Still, he wanders through the rest of the house, through the empty rooms and the ghosts, trailing his fingers along the wallpaper. Breathing.

At last he goes into their bedroom—just his, now—closes the door, and lies down on the bed. He shuts his eyes. There is something screaming inside him, some agony that makes his breath come slower now, and it _hurts._ He presses his face into Sirius’s pillow, but there’s nothing, no scent.

Remus can see him, still falling, sinking with that grace he always had, and the look on his face—the glaze over his eyes—the slight dropping of his jaw as he vanished, but even before he was lost from view he was already _gone._

The awful stillness of the air is broken at last by the sound of someone entering and making their way up the stairs. Remus sits up and waits.

Andromeda appears in the open doorway, drawn, with dark bags beneath her eyes.

A spike of fear, muted but no less painful, jabs at Remus. “Tonks,” he says, his voice unrecognizable. “What—”

“She’s fine,” Andromeda sighs. She clearly means to smile, but it looks like a grimace. “Or she will be in a day or two. The Healers told me she wouldn’t wake up until this afternoon.”

“Good,” Remus says. “That’s good.” He means it with all his heart, even the broken bits.

Andromeda comes to sit beside him on the bed. She hasn’t changed out of her pajamas since St. Mungo’s. After several minutes, in which Remus’s thoughts drift unevenly, with large spaces in between, she says, “I’m sorry.”

Remus doesn’t know if he wants her to say that, or if he would rather he never heard those words again. He remembers, across the years, the way she sat in the sitting room of the cottage and said the same thing. He knows what he said next— _you didn’t do it, you don’t need to apologize_ —but saying that many words seems too taxing. He watches the late-morning light creep across the walls.

“I can’t imagine,” Andromeda begins, then falls silent. She tries again, “It must be,” but that goes unfinished, too.

Just as well, Remus thinks, in the disjointed way that he’s been thinking for the last twelve hours. There doesn’t seem to be anything that he could say, ever, about this.

But she finally finds her voice. “It’s just like him,” she says, “to run off and put himself in danger when he’s almost in the clear.”

Of all the emotions he might feel, anger has not once entered Remus’s mind. He feels a seed of it begin to grow now that it’s suggested, a hungry little thing looking for something to rage at—but it withers quickly. “I don’t blame him,” he tells her. “It was always his way.” And it was; he can’t imagine Sirius without a fight, without a rush of blood and a pounding heart.

“But still,” she says.

Remus understands, in a way. But he can’t stop thinking about the winter of ’79, when it was bitterly cold and the full moon had been one of the worst in a long time. Someone had been drunk, and made a rude remark about the way Remus was leaning on Sirius.

And he had felt the way Sirius’s whole body tensed, like a wire stretched taut, had heard his breathing quicken—and then felt him relax and support Remus more firmly, even holding his hand, and they had staggered on home without a word in reply.

Remus makes a noise that he hears only faintly, similar to the cry of a wounded dog, he thinks. “He did what was right,” he says with more conviction than he thought he could put into his voice.

And then, because this is still a war and he mustn’t drown inside himself, not yet, he gets up and continues cleaning.

On Saturday he writes up the report for the Order records.

 _17 June 1996,_ he begins, _Dept. of Mysteries, MoM Headquarters, London, England._ He does his best to articulate the cause, and then comes the list of combatants. They were outnumbered by only one, he realizes, penning the names.

He details the casualties, ending in a list of the dead, which is only a solitary name that Remus takes two minutes to write.

 _Cause of death: Stunned by Lestrange, fell through veiled archway._ Unbidden, he wonders if the spell or the archway is to blame. The captivating despair of that idea holds him for several seconds, until he blinks and adds one last sentence. _Body not recovered._

On Sunday he is visited by Andromeda again, but also Albus Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, and his own father, and Remus spends the hours showing them that he will be all right. Tea, sit, converse, repeat. After they leave, he doesn’t move from his chair until the last traces of brilliant sunset have vanished from the sky.

He receives a letter from Andromeda on Monday telling him that Tonks is out of St. Mungo’s. The owl comes in the morning, but it’s late afternoon by the time Remus appears on their doorstep with flowers.

Tonks looks up when he enters the small, sunny living room. Her hair is light brown and she smiles, but tremblingly. “Hi,” she says, and stares at her feet.

Remus, who has remembered how to talk, sits in the well-worn armchair beside her. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m,” she says, “you know.” She shrugs. “No lasting damage, they say.”

Relief floods Remus. He exhales. “I’m glad.” He watches her avoid his gaze. “It’s not your fault.”

Tonks’s head jerks around, disbelieving, mouth half-open in surprise. She swallows. “I was dueling Bellatrix,” she whispers. “If I’d stopped her…”

“Don’t think like that,” Remus orders. “There’s no point.”

“But I could have stopped her.”

“Sirius—” Remus fights for control of his voice. “Sirius knew what he was doing. He knew it was dangerous. You mustn’t blame yourself for any of it.”

She glances away. “Don’t you blame yourself?”

In the way of all Blacks, the question doesn’t seem as terrible as it is. But Remus is blindsided for a moment by the degree to which he _does_ —because he should have known, he should have forced Sirius to stay, he should have Disapparated with him the moment he arrived. And if he had seen how upset Sirius was that night, if he had headed it off, would he have been calm enough not to consider fighting at all?

But like he said: pointless. “I’m trying not to.”

Tonks stares at the floor again, blinking furiously. “I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice breaks.

Maybe the reason, Remus thinks, the reason he keeps hearing those words, is simply because they’re the default for when nothing else will do any better. What do you say at times like this? There’s no comfort that words can give in the end. Apologies don’t really help, but they don’t hurt, either. “So am I,” he tells her.

Suddenly they are hugging awkwardly over the gap between their chairs. Tonks is crying noiselessly into Remus’s shirt, and he looks over her shoulder to see Andromeda in the doorway, an agonized expression on her face. She watches for a moment longer, then leaves. He can hear her murmuring to Ted in the kitchen.

It seems as if hours pass before Tonks lets go. She sniffles and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m leaving,” she croaks. “Next week. I’ve got a flat in Soho.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s going to get worse from now on, isn’t it?”

Remus nods.

“I thought so. And I can’t stay here, not with Dad—he’s a Muggle-born, he won’t be safe. It’s time to go it alone.”

“No,” Remus says, “not alone.” He smiles, and it hurts, but it’s real.

On Tuesday he decides he can stand to go through the bedroom, then spends most of the day gripped by the realization that he cannot. In the end he grits his teeth and uses a spell to put the little things in boxes. There isn’t much. All that’s left is the clothes, which he packs away without looking and stuffs in the attic. He half-hopes they rot there forever.

He travels to Hogwarts on Wednesday and quietly makes his way to the headmaster’s office. Dumbledore surveys him from behind desk, steepled fingers, and half-moon spectacles. “Good afternoon.”

Remus ignores that and edges forward in his seat. “I’ll go to the werewolves,” he says.

Dumbledore looks faintly surprised. “Earlier,” he says slowly, “you preferred to avoid that work. With very sound reasoning, I might add.”

“That was earlier.” Remus hates this chair, it makes him feel small no matter how old he is. “Now, I—I have to do something. I have to fight.”

“There are many ways to be of use to the Order,” Dumbledore says. “You need not—”

“I _need,”_ Remus interrupts fiercely, “to do this. I’m the only one who can.”

Dumbledore inclines his head in agreement. “Be that as it may…” He sighs. “This is a difficult time for all of us, Remus, but you bear what seems to be the brunt of it. I do not want you to make this decision out of recklessness, rage, or pain.”

Remus nearly laughs. If not for those reasons, he thinks, why does anyone really do anything? But he says, “I’m doing it because it’s what’s right.”

For a long moment, Dumbledore is silent. “There are thousands of things that are right,” he says at last, then holds up a hand when Remus opens his mouth. “If this is what you believe is right for you, then I am glad to hear it.”

When he leaves, Remus has a map and a notion to get going that very evening. But upon arriving at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, he discovers Moody, Tonks, and Molly Weasley waiting for him, and understands that there is one thing left to do.

So, on Thursday, he meets the others at King’s Cross. He greets the twins, allows Moody to tell him off for being late, and tells Arthur that Sirius’s old motorbike is waiting for him in the garden of a small cottage in Yorkshire. He squeezes Tonks briefly around the shoulders and notes her vibrantly pink hair.

As they stand waiting for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, Molly turns to smile at Remus. “Arthur is going to drive me mad with that bike,” she tells him, sounding rather accusatory.

Remus chuckles. It’s getting easier to do that. “Sirius drove me mad with it, too,” he replies.

Molly gives him a searching look. “You told me last summer that you’d help look after my children,” she says, “if something happened.”

“I remember. That’s still true.”

“Well,” she continues, “I hope you know that the offer goes both ways.”

“I haven’t got any children,” Remus deadpans.

“I meant _you.”_ Molly purses her lips at him. “Our home is always open to you, for whatever you might need.”

“Thanks, Molly,” Remus says, matching her serious tone. “I’m grateful. But you don’t need to worry. I’ll be all right.”

Her face relaxes. “Of course,” she says kindly. “You will, won’t you?”

**Author's Note:**

> "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on Earth when another is gone." — _The Song of Achilles_ by Madeline Miller


End file.
